1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing control apparatus for exercising paper-feeding control in a printing apparatus equipped with a paper feeding tray which is capable of stocking a plurality of sheet-like recording media, as well as to a printing apparatus, a printing control method, a printing control program, and a recording medium for storing thereon the printing control program.
2. Description of the Related Art
In order to operate a printer to put out an image generated by a personal computer (PC), a command for performing printing (hereafter referred to simply as “printing command”) and image data need to be transmitted from the PC to the printer. The printing command includes a variety of specification instruction commands such as a command to specify a paper tray, a command to specify a paper size, and a command to specify a paper type.
The software application installed in the PC allows a user to specify a paper tray with respect to a print target carrying image data on a page-by-page basis. Specifically, by means of a printer driver, a command to specify a paper tray is transmitted to the printer in accordance with the instruction issued by the software application. In this connection, Japanese Unexamined Patent Publication JP-A 8-90846 (1996) discloses the invention of a technique for making paper-tray specification on a page-by-page basis by means of a print buffer device connected between a printer and a PC.
In the case of creating a networked environment by connecting together a plurality of PCs, a printer, and a printing control apparatus so as for a plurality of users to share the printer, typified by LAN (Local Area Network) for instance, chances are high that requests on paper for use in printing vary from user to user. In this case, if the printer has only a few paper trays, the user has to place a desired paper sheet on a manual feeding tray before starting a printing operation. In a printing control apparatus of conventional design, a printing operation is temporarily halted only when a standby condition that is necessary to select a manual-feeding mode (hereafter referred to simply as “manual-feeding standby”) is specified with respect to the first page of a print target under print job issued by external equipment such as a PC. This gives the user an opportunity to place a desired paper sheet on the tray.
Moreover, in a printing control apparatus designed to control a printer of the type that performs printing with only a single piece of paper placed on a manual feeding tray, when a manual feeding tray-printing mode is specified, a printing operation will be temporarily halted every time specification is made.
In a print job for printing a plurality of pages, when manual-feeding standby is specified with respect to the second and later pages, the printing operation will not be temporarily halted. In this case, the user has no chance to place a paper sheet. On the other hand, in a conventional printing control apparatus of another type, a printing operation is temporarily halted every time a manual feeding tray is specified. This requires the user to place a paper sheet every time a printing operation comes to a halt.